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Don’t Open the Door (#70)

In Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet, the Chinese bride and groom collapse in their hotel room after an exhausting wedding. There’s a knock on the door. The bride goes to answer it. The groom tries to stop her. Too late! All the young wedding guests pour into the hotel room, carting tables, chairs, booze, and supplies for potentially humiliating sexual games. They set up shop and party. Questionable, regrettable activities ensue.

The moral of the story? Never open the door.

Sadly, my Chinese-American husband neglected to show me this movie until after we got married.

I suspected it was my Maid-of-Honor, M. She wrote beautiful calligraphy, and I’d asked her to write out the table name/ guest list for the reception. She hadn’t finished it yet, and I figured she had a question.

I opened the door. It wasn’t M. It was Andy’s cousins. Multiple sets of Chinese-American hands grabbed me and pulled me out the door.

“C’mon!”

“What are you doing in here?”

“The party is downstairs!”

I grabbed onto the doorframe. “Oh, no, the party is TOMORROW!”

Fashion Plate Cousin would not be denied. She pried up my fingers, one by one, while Engineer Cousin, Baby Lush Cousin, and Chronically Late Cousin yanked at my waist.

Now, I mostly come from big, muscular, Germanic peasant stock. My forbearers were built to work in the fields all day, push wagons, drag recalcitrant draft horses, and haul pig carcasses. After I finish squats or leg weights at the gym, I enjoy watching various men surreptitiously remove weights before using the same equipment. My metabolism is sluggish at best, and so I can do quite a bit on very few calories. (Dieting is a hideous exercise in self-deprivation, however. I spend my miserable dieting days telling myself that when the famine comes, everyone else is going to die first and I will eat them. Usually my diet ends before cannibalism sounds more appealing than carrots. But not always. I mean, if Fried Green Tomatoes taught me anything, it’s that you can do a lot with barbecue sauce.)

Even though I was below my fighting weight, I probably could have taken down all of Andy’s less-than-100-pound cousins. But not without leaving some marks. I imagined a big family photo of our wedding — complete with black eyes, and Andy’s cousins forever pointing out the bruises, sighing, and saying, “Oh, yes, those were from the bride…”

So I let the Chinese cousins drag me out of my room, down the stairs, down another hallway, and into the tavern attached to the Inn. (Note to all not-yet-married readers – consider your family’s relationship with alcohol before selecting a wedding site with a tavern attached.)

All of Andy’s family members under age 35 – and some NOT over 18 — were in the tavern, leaving the locals in the dust as they tossed back shots and Guinness lager. The small-town tavern dated from the 1700s. It probably hadn’t seen such an influx of melanin since the French and Indian War.

Andy stood in the center of the tavern, surrounded by the male cousins. The female cousins shoved me at Andy with triumphant shrieks, then dashed to the bar. The men followed.

Andy grabbed my hand. “Run! Before they come back!”

“What’s going on?!” I yelled, as he tried to tow me through the crowd.

“They want to party! Pour booze down your throat!”

I don’t drink. It sounded like a recipe for a disastrous wedding. I scurried after Andy until a hand came down on my shoulder, halting our progress.

It was my twenty-one-year-old Baby Brother. With yet another drink in his hand. He hugged me, sloshing beer all over us. “This is the best wedding EVER!”

M appeared and yelled, “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”

I yelled back, “Aren’t you supposed to be doing calligraphy? No one is going to know where to sit!”

M grabbed Baby Brother’s drink. She downed the Guinness in a few gulps.

Sure enough, the cousins pushed off the bar and came after us. We made it out of the tavern. Cat-and-mouse ensued in the hallways of the Inn. And damn, those cousins emitted some seriously high-pitched shrieks.

I just wanted to go to bed.

So did the elderly, leaf-peeping tourists.

And so did Andy’s mom. When Andy, in desperation, led us to his her room, she was furious. “Your Daddy is sleeping! What is wrong with you?”

She glared at the cousins. They melted away.

I mumbled something like, “Tell your mom Denny needs help!” and slunk away also…but in another direction. I snuck back to the front desk, persuaded the manager to give me a spare key, and took a circuitous route back up to my blissfully silent bridal suite.

And the next time there was a knock on the door, I did not open it.

*************

In case you were wondering…

M and Baby Singing Sister got Baby Brother to his hotel room. The locals still tell stories of the staggering volume of vomit that coated every surface of that particular hotel room the following day. Baby Brother was nearly as green as the bridesmaid dresses in our wedding photos.

Andy’s mom did indeed rescue Denny. He threw up less than Baby Brother and only had to restart his Best Man toast twice.

M did not finish the calligraphy. All the wedding guests found their seats anyway.

When Andy and I finally watched The Wedding Banquet, we laughed, we groaned, and I hissed, “This is information that would have been useful to me last year!”

“I just wanted to go to bed.” Hahaha! That is the best escape route from a party – too tired and too weary to party. Very wise of you to escape the projectile vomiting. It must have been a bit of a shock to discover how rowdy your family can get when it comes to romantic affairs…

That probably won’t happen at my wedding. I’m too proper and sensible. lol. An Irish man asked me to let my hair down. I tired but I’ve short hair, a bit of a challenge. I don’t think he was hitting on me; we were foraging, hardly a romantic sojourn.

The group were foraging for True Service Fruit, part of the Sorbus family. It’s an old fruit and has to be bletted. Some varieties are really good.

The fruit is about 1 inch wide (2.5 cm), with about 2 to 5 seeds in each fruit. The shape can be apple-shaped or pear-shaped, with skin that is yellowish or greenish with splodges of pink or red and some russetting.

Two years ago, I secured a growing space in a community garden. No body wanted the raised bed; the soil was so sandy that water just went through, it was covered with weeds (some edible weeds ie chick weed) and located in a partially sunny but sheltered spot. Access to water was not always guaranteed.

I had never grown my own veg except when I was a very young child (doesn’t count)

At that time, I was on a volunteer programme with a horticultural organisation. I received the training (growing your own veg organically) but not formally assessed.

These were some of the steps I took:

1. Feed and protect the soil
I used sustainable sea weed meal and grew green manures (I only did it for 3 months
due to the growing season). I used sustainable sea weed meal and other plant
materials throughout the growing season.

a. Mulching (deep in some places)
b. Ground cover where there was bare soil (I grew fenugreek (great in curries)